


Childhood Games

by Kyjar (orphan_account), signalbeam (orphan_account)



Category: Teen Titans
Genre: F/M, Friendship, Humor, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-04-21
Updated: 2004-04-20
Packaged: 2017-10-18 09:48:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 8,345
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/187600
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/Kyjar, https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/signalbeam
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>It's hard to believe that I wrote this seven years ago. But what's really hard for me to believe is that I was apparently funnier at thirteen than I am now.</p>
    </blockquote>





	1. Scrabble

**Author's Note:**

> It's hard to believe that I wrote this seven years ago. But what's really hard for me to believe is that I was apparently funnier at thirteen than I am now.

"This isn't criticism, but how you blow up a washing machine with gunpowder if it's _wet_?" Raven asked from across the Scrabble playing board.

"I don't know," Robin admitted, forcing himself to not look at her legs. Why did the washer have to blow up _her_ cloaks? "But it wasn't gunpowder. It was a Venus Cactus Woman Spore."

Robin spelled "CIRCUS".

Raven formed the word "IDIOT" using the 'I'.

"A Venus Cactus Woman Spore," Raven echoed, disbelieving. Robin nodded.

"A Venus Cactus Woman Spore," he repeated, looking mournfully at his tray of vowels. Raven made a snorting sound.

"We don't fight plants, Robin. We leave that to the pyromaniacs... who also can find ways to ignite a washing machine with wet gunpowder."

Robin took a deep breath. This was going to be a long game.

"I told you, I'm sorry," he said. "What more do you want from me?"

"I had some of those cloaks since I was eight." She looked up at him, eyes flashing dangerously. "'Sorry' doesn't quite cut it." Ouch. Robin winced; that felt like she just stuck a knife in his ribs and twisted it a few times.

"Look. I... um..." He felt blood rushing to his cheeks as he became more and more flustered. I, um, am what, sorry? Sympathize with your loss? "Pass," he finally choked out lamely.

Raven made a vague sound in the back of her throat that sounded suspiciously like "cretin" and carefully spelled out 'SNARK', connecting it with circus.

"Is that even a word?" Robin asked incredulously.

"Jargon Files defines it as a 'system failure. When a user's process'—"

Robin held his hands up in surrender and quickly took a note of the word to use in future Scrabble games. "Never mind. I don't want to know."

A, O, O, O, E, A, U. What a lousy rack he had...

"S from 'snark', E, A," Robin said aloud. Raven nodded in approval. "Well, it's not like they offered much protection. I could get you a cloak of polymerized titanium..."

"No thank you," she interjected curtly, spelling out "BASTARD". Robin squirmed uncomfortably. Okay, so maybe that was a little low. Raven sighed. "I appreciate the offer, but your cloaks are too heavy." There was a " _and I hate the texture of them"_ undertone in her voice.

"I've never had much of a problem with them," Robin said, trying to figure out why he got all the vowels. The odds of him picking six consecutive handfuls of vowels in a row was-

"My cloaks are longer and larger than yours are. I'd probably collapse from the sheer weight of them," Raven explained as Robin spelled out 'T-O-O'. He needed more consonants... The lack of them was making his ego look small.

"They aren't that heavy."

"To you, maybe. I'm not exactly a body builder." she said, making the word "Q-U-A-S-A-R."

Robin boggled for a moment.

"That's not a word."

"Yes it is," Raven told him, calm as always.

"What's a quasar, then?" Robin challenged her boldly.

Raven cleared her throat. "A quasar is a star like object that may send out radio waves and other forms of energy." Her voice, if possible, became even more monotonous when reciting the definition.

"What are you, a dictionary?" Robin muttered, a small smile flitting on his face.

"If I were a dictionary, I'd be flammable and would be easy to burst into flames, even if it was with _wet gunpowder._ "

Robin sighed again. Girls, even ones who claimed to be emotionless sure did overreact a lot.

"You're going to hold a grudge all day, aren't you?"

Raven only smirked as she watched Robin struggling to make a word with only vowels. "I can hold a grudge all year."

* * *

It was the perfect plan. Blow up the washing machine while it was doing Starfire's load, blame it on Robin, watch Starfire and Robin bicker and start making out a few hours later. Walk in about an hour later and tell them it was him that brought the two together and he'd be a hero! Project Wattlebird would be a success and Beast Boy would owe him twenty bucks!

This was why Cyborg's jaw almost crashed onto the floor when he saw Raven dressed only in her leotard playing Scrabble with Robin in the kitchen. Several burned and ruined cloaks were draped on the couch. He was puzzled for a moment. Just for a moment, for he realized he blew up the wrong person's laundry a second later.

"That's not a word," he heard Raven say. Her back was turned to him, and for the first time the android realized exactly how small she seemed without the cloak. Despite that, she seemed to give off an... what was the right word... _ominous_ air.

"'Mauvais' is a word in French," Robin said smugly. His mouth was set in a jaunty, gloating sort of smile. His arms were crossed arrogantly across his chest.

"'Mauvais' isn't in the dictionary."

"It is in a French-English one."

"We don't _have_ French-English dictionaries here," Raven said, voice rising sharply. An abandoned cup of tea began glowing black.

"You said we could use _any_ dictionary-this includes French. If you must know, it means 'bad'. Il fait mauvais, for example, is roughly that 'there is bad weather'."

Raven took a deep breath. Obviously, she couldn't think of a reply to counter him.

"Bad weather does a lot of things to my cloaks. None of them involve blowing them up" the empath huffed.

Cyborg gulped at her acidic tone and started tiptoeing to his room. If Raven ever figured out it was him...

* * *

Robin stared blankly at the board. What other options were there? Well, there was 'Google', a word that sent the two into ten minutes of bitter feuding, 'rukia', 'xenophobia', 'mangez' and a word that looked like 'BRQYZODQDFD'. He looked up at Raven, who smirked back at him. He looked at the "word" again and pursed his lips. If he challenged her, Raven would probably give him some dictionary entry from Merriam-Webster.

"A Brqyzodqdfd is a serious eye condition in which one sees many peas and carrots. It is caused by vitamin B12 deficiency..."

There was no way he was going to let her win. With a casual flick of his wrist, he 'accidentally' wiped the entire board clean.

"Oh dear," Robin said with sardonic apology lacing his words. "Sorry about that."

Raven frowned at him disapprovingly. "You're a sore loser."

"B-R-Q-Y-Z-O-D-Q-D-F-D isn't a word," Robin said, shrugging. Raven made a face and used her telekinesis to put the board game away. "Listen... I'm sorry about the cloaks."

"I know you are," Raven murmured, making a face. "I'm going to the mall to get new ones." Her eyes flickered towards the clock. "I should've left sooner instead of spending so much time playing. The store's closing in twenty minutes."

He stared at the purple haired girl. "Why didn't you go, then?" Raven, he knew, tended to get up and leave the room at any given moment unless there was something important-or if she enjoyed spending time with the said person.

"I was having too much fun beating you at Scrabble," Raven said, a small smirk on her face. She was a bad liar, not making eye contact and her tone noticeably changing halfway through the sentence. Robin didn't say anything about it. "You look like a complete idiot when you're losing."

"...I'll take that as a compliment," he remarked as Raven got up and left the room. "Have a fun time," Robin called after her before the door closed.

He didn't bother asking if she forgave him or not. He already knew she didn't. With a sigh, he stood up and looked at the cloaks piled pathetically on the couch. The wonder boy walked up to a few of them, laying them on the floor and inspecting them a little closer. Most of them were just shreds of cloth now, although there were some salvagable scraps. He felt the familiar buzz in the back of his brain-he could make a new cloak out of these scraps!

But...

Robin winced, remembering his Home Economics classes with Alfred. While she would appreciate the effort, she'd probably make some snide remark about how it looked like a goat.

Perhaps he could goad Alfred into fixing them for her. All he had to do was grab a few pictures, maybe a blueprint on how to make them, and then voila! Instant cloak. No more "I'm going to eat your soul" Raven.

Smirking, Robin pulled out a pair of Bat scissors and began working.

 _TBC in I Spy Hanging Men_


	2. Scrabble

_Day 1_

Raven was having a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. She fell up the stairs in the morning, got slammed into a wall by Beast Boy while drinking tea, and some idiot dyed all her cloaks pink. She switched laundry hours with Starfire and just when she thought her luck was changing, the washing machine blew up. She winded up playing Scrabble with Robin out of guilt, and to top it all off, she fell _up_ the stairs when she went to her room.

On the bright side, she didn't have to tolerate any of Beast Boy or Cyborg's antics, as she had, more or less literally, blown up when she found out her cloaks were gone. It wasn't that she didn't like them... she just didn't like their antics and general invasion of privacy. And even better, the store that made her cloaks was going to ship another batch in three days.

Of course, that meant three days in just a leotard, too...

Perhaps she should consider jeans?

* * *

  
 _Day 2_

Alfred Pennyworth was a rather dignified man. He never stood with his jaw slack, never stared, never pointed, never slurped his soup, and wouldn't be caught dead asking a woman her cup size. Following this logic, that would make Robin somewhat of a barbarian.

Well, Alfred mused, he _was_ a teenager.

"Master Robin," the butler tried explaining to the distraught sidekick. "I cannot make a cloak without specific measurements. You must go ask her."

Robin paled. "But..."

"These scraps of cloth don't tell me much about her," Alfred told the hyperventilating teen while gesturing to the bits of cloak spread out before him on the floor. "I'm sure Miss Raven has been asked about her bust when making her previous cloaks."

Robin's cheeks went from pasty to startling red of his tunic.

"Can't _you_ ask her?" he managed to squeak out, trying to find a way to weasel out of the task. Alfred gave a small cough into a gloved hand.

"Most certainly not," the butler said, calling upon the most dignity he could before saying the sentence. The unspoken message between the two couldn't be clearer unless it was through glass: It isn't appropriate for _me_ to ask. That's why I'm sending _you_.

"Why do you need to know her cup size, anyway?" Robin said beginning to feel melancholy. Raven was going to kill him-he just knew she was!

"Surely you have seen Wonder Woman," The butler deadpanned. He picked up his ostrich feather duster and resumed cleaning. Robin watched Alfred clean with a faint feeling of homesickness settling down in his stomach. He was going to miss Alfred... no matter how vague and infuriatingly cold he could be at times.

"Tell Cyborg he can have all my stuff if I die."

* * *

  
 _Mario's_

 _7:45PM_

"Why am I this again?" Raven muttered just loud enough for Robin to hear. Robin looked up from his napkin. The words 'cup size' immediately popped into Robin's brain and his cheeks began turning a faint shade of pink.

"Cyborg told me I should take you out for dinner. I thought it would be a good idea...and our food isn't done yet," Robin said, and then looked back down. How many letters did 'pernickety' have? Raven glowered slightly and pursed her lips.

"Do you always do whatever Cyborg tells you to?" she asked, somehow managing to stab his ego and nurse a cup of water at the same time. Five minutes had passed since her companion began setting up the hangman board, and her patience was beginning to give out.

"He's my best friend. We think that you need to get out more." Okay, that last part was a lie, but it wasn't like Raven could tell.

"Whatever." Raven leaned over the table and poked Robin's arm. "Are you done yet?"

...Or could she? Robin gulped and quickly made four more slots, hoping wildly he got the number of letters right. "Pick a letter, any letter."

"T."

T for typical. Raven always started with the most common consonants and worked her way from there. Robin wrote 'T' in the appropriate slot with the green crayon and waited for Raven to make her next move. Naturally, the telekinetic chose to take her time, resting her chin on her hand. Her eyes began staring off to God knows where and her jaw began to slacken. Without her cape to give her the Moody Goth look, Raven looked somewhat...ditzy. It wasn't her most flattering look, but he could live with that.

' _Measurements, Robin, measurements. Take the measurements... or ask her while serenading outside her window,_ ' a smooth, perverted almost Slade-like voice crooned in his mind's ear. Robin almost dropped his crayon.

"E."

"What?"

"Does. Your. Word. Have. An. E. In. It. Or. Not?" said Raven slowly, perhaps even patronizingly, as if talking to a slow child. Robin sighed. It was impossible to sate her...

"Don't you normally say 's' after 't'?" Robin asked casually, crayoning the letters in their rightful spots.

"No," Raven said guardedly. Her facial expression never changed.

"Yes you do," Robin said triumphantly, a victory smile butting into his face no matter how hard he tried to stop it. Stupid arrogance! "You normally go T, S, R, E, A, I, O, L, U-"

"I'm changing the order a little. Do you have a problem with that?" Raven interrupted, feeling more than a little unnerved. It was one thing to detect a pattern, but it was another thing to memorize the order of letter... especially since this was only their second time playing hangman.

"R."

Robin sulkily wrote in the 'R'. Perhaps he should've picked the word 'xylophone' instead, or something she wouldn't expect... something like "I'm sorry, alright?" or-

"I."

One 'I'. Raven was having good luck today. Normally he would have managed to get a head and a body out of her by now.

"S."

"Finally!" blurt out Robin drawing a gigantic, lopsided head on the flimsy napkin. He then proceeded to try to make the head a perfect circle, chewing on his tongue nervously. Raven, not really expecting the outburst, gave a reflexive knee jerk response, her face acquiring a rather sour look as her knee got stuck on someone's used gum. It was only out of pride's sake that kept her from saying, "EEEEWWW". Then again, she had an entire host of emotions to say that for her.

"When will the food be done?" Raven asked a few minutes later. When Robin kept trying to make a perfect circle, she reached across the table and snatched the crayon out of his grasp. "It doesn't have to be perfect," she said monotonously.

"The waiter said ten minutes...half an hour ago." Robin said, checking the clock. He eyed the crayon in Raven's grasp. "Can I have my crayon back?"

* * *

  
 _Mario's kitchen_

 _7:15PM_

"Beast Boy, when I said 'Robin and Starfire', what part of that did you not get?" Cyborg shouted from the other end of the comm. Beast Boy cringed and attempted to turn the volume down. Unfortunately, Robin made the communicators with no mute switch.

"The 'Starfire' part?" Beast Boy offered nervously, palms sweating.

"Don't play smart with me," Cyborg said with the sort of forced calmness he got when he was about to explode. "I just want to know how you could not only turn Raven's cloaks pink instead of Starfire's, but also tell Raven that Robin wanted to meet her!"

"It was a mistake!" Beast Boy hissed back. "And besides, Starfire likes every color!"

"That's what you think," Cyborg muttered on the other end darkly as if he had been on the receiving end of Starfire's wrath. "Where are you, anyway?"

The green boy felt his face turn hot with embarrassment. "Mario's kitchen." He left out the "cowering under the pipes" part.

"Mario? Who's Mario?"

"The restaurant."

"That's nice, BB. What're you doing there, trying to steal food?" chuckled Cyborg, all anger apparently forgotten. "And how could you mess up? It was just three words-three words! Robin-and-Starfire!"

Beast Boy made the mistake of turning into a mouse at that moment, and he made the mistake of squeaking pathetically as Cyborg continued his tirade.

"Do you hear that?" demanded one of the chefs from the other side. Beast Boy felt his heart jump into his throat, but felt the pressure relieve as others said no. The said chef opened the cabinet door and looked inside. It was then the fairly intelligent boy made the mistake of waddling (still as a mouse) towards the almost painfully bright light and onto a cook's hand, and it was then the kitchen exploded into chaos.

And...well, now there's a plausible explanation for why Robin and Raven's dinner was late that night.

* * *

They left the restaurant after waiting for another half hour. Raven would have preferred waiting longer, but when a chef ran out waving a carving knife like a lunatic...

It was suddenly a lot easier to stand up and get out than it was to stick around.

"I spy something _red_ , not purple."

"Fire hydrant, then," Raven said coolly, wishing she had pants or a pair of jeans as she levitated through the desolate streets of Jump City. She could see her breath curling in front of her nose, her hands had goosebumps crawling all over them and...and... her knees were _freezing_.

"Nope." And not only did Robin have a cape, his wasn't in tatters, he was wearing pants. Tight, tacky, perhaps even ugly pants, but they were pants anyway.

How rude.

"Leaf."

"You're starting to repeat yourself," Robin said with a small grin. "You said leaf back when we first started."

Raven's eyes narrowed as the memory of the beginning of the game flashed before her eyes. "Hmph."

"Do you want a hint?" She could almost _see_ what he was thinking: "victory tasted oh-so-good..." What a jerk.

"No."

"All right..." They walked (one of them, anyway) in silence, Robin waiting for the levitating girl to think of some sort of answer to the question while Raven debated on whether to do a mindmeld...or maybe just sock him in the face.

"Chinatown."

"I can't see Chinatown from here."

"Sure you can... all I have to do is throw you a few feet in the air." Raven considered doing it the said act, but then decided against it. The boy _was_ her leader. "A genius that can blow up laundry machines?"

It took a moment for Robin to catch on. "Very funny."

Small, knowing smirks were exchanged between the two.

"The lamps?" she guessed aimlessly. Robin made a face.

"No. Try again." His voice sounded a little distressed, as if to say, "and hurry up before it gets out of sight." That could be a figment of her imagination-wasn't hallucinations a side effect of being freaking _cold_?

"Sidewalk." Another aimless, random guess. Robin moaned quietly in mock despair. Raven sighed and shivered again. The sun was setting, turning part of the sky into a blur of warm, fiery colors. Oddly enough, the sky bore a startling resemblance to the time when Starfire's brqyzodqdfd became out of control and exploded, showering the group in alien plant guts.

' _I'll give you a hint,'_ Robin's mind grumbled. It surprised her. She wasn't even _trying_ to tap into his brain, but his thoughts were hitting her over the head like a war hammer. The way his thoughts flowed into her mind was almost like they had a closer bond-one that they didn't have. Well, it wasn't like she was cheating... technically. _'You're looking at it.'_

' _Looking at what?'_ she wondered irritably. All she was looking at was the sky. Which was, coincidentally... red...

Of course. She looked at Robin, somewhere between shocked and pleased.

"Figured it out yet?" he asked with a lopsided grin.

" _This_ is the reason you wouldn't let me teleport us back home?" she demanded, raising an eyebrow. "This was the reason we stopped playing hangman?"

What sort of dumb word was pernickety, anyway? She would have chosen mischievous.

"Partially," Robin admitted, his face turning red and his skin feeling a few sizes too small. "The other part was because I need your... um, measurements..."

Robin gave her a pleading, imploring look. It was absolutely repulsive, but cute in a strange way. At least she now knew why Starfire kept giving in to Robin's tedious training schedule, no matter whatever hour of the night it was.

"...Why?"

"Well," Robin started, his voice becoming a little stronger. After all, she wasn't trying to kill him... yet. "I'm making you a new cloak and I need to get some more specific statistics if it's going to work out right."

A new cloak... right.

"You have us take bi-annual measurements," she waffled. There was a giant, deafening croak from the pond as Robin's familiar 'clang, clack, clang, clack' rhythm of metal against concrete halted, as if his feet realized that Robin wasted all that time on trying to get information out of Raven when he could have just checked the computer. Raven smirked and continued levitating away. Robin ran after her several seconds later.

"I knew that," he panted.

"Of course you did," she said sympathetically. "Hmm. It's my turn, isn't it?"

Robin answered affirmatively. Raven hmm-ed again. She could do something like the abandoned baby carriage across the street, the weird looking paper bag, a mutilated clown suit or...

"I spy something who apparently suffers from memory lapses. It's red, green, yellow, and black. What is it?"

"Hilarious."

"I know."


	3. Project Wattlebird

_Day three_  
 _A water park_  
 _2:15PM_

Raven yawned and leaned back in her (incredulously uncomfortable) chair. Okay, so maybe being dragged to the water park wasn't so bad after all. Of course,she found it hard to ignore thatit smelled like sweat, chlorine and suntan lotion, not to mention musky beach towels, alcohol, and a something that reminded her of crayons…

Her eyes narrowed. If this was the best Robin could do, she wouldhave to grab him and ask if he had testosterone an arrogant-

"Raven!"

"Robin," she deadpanned, trying to make it look like she was suffering loudly (as opposed to suffering silently). Robin, apparently oblivious, sat down next to her, readjusting his mask. She glowered slightly at it, and ignored the shriek from a girl as her bottle of suntan lotion exploded. Personally, she wouldn't mind if that mask "accidentally" slipped off his face. All she had to do was find something to disolve that stupid glue.

"Why aren't you out there?" he asked, face the epitome of innocence. Raven felt her stomach churn at the sight.

"I told you," she said, frowning. "The sun is burning my retinas, and I hate the swimming suit."

Robin smirked. She glared.

"It's not that bad." The Boy Wonder cracked his knuckles. "You wear a leotard everyday as part of your uniform. A swimming suit is pretty much the same thing."

"Arms."

"What?"

Raven glared and held out her arm in front of him, just in case he forgot what it looked like. People had a tendency for forgetting that her arms were basically twigs. And she had granny arms, but that wasn't the point.

Robin sighed. "You're probably wearing the most modest swimming suit in the entire park, Raven."

"So?"

A slightly lecherous grin creeped on Robin's face, andshe resisted the urge to slap it off."I don't think they're that bad."

"That's what _you_ think," she muttered. Heexhaled deeplyand relaxed in the plastic chair. Apparently, Robin's obliviousness extended to ignoring the plastic digging into his crept into her mind; how did he _do_ that?

"So… want to go swimming?"

Raven's eyebrow twitched. "I'm reading."

Robin grinned and grabbed her wrist. She balked, but the next thing she knew, Robin had pulled her up and dragged her over to a pool.

"Robin, I don't know if this is a good idea—"

"Just try it out," he said, ignoring herwinceas she stepped on a large piece of gravel."A little fun—"

"SQUEEEEEEE!"

Both Titans froze in mid gesture. A teenage girl was standing right next to them. She was wearing, coincidentally, a bright green, red, and yellow bikini. Her eyes transformed into little hearts, and…

"IT'S ROBIN!" the girl squealed. Slowly, the rest of the pool turned to the girl and…

"I don't like how they're looking at us," Robin muttered, groping for his utility belt. To his horror, it wasn't there.

" _Us_?" Raven asked disbelievingly. "They're looking at _you_."

Slowly, one by one, the girls began creeping towards the pair in a dangerous crouch and then…

* * *

  
 _Day four  
_ _The same water park as before  
_ _11:15AM_

"I never want to come here ever again," Raven muttered. She eyed various drooling girls warily through the chain-link fence. If Robin hadn't forbid her from killing them...

"Then why are you here now?" Robin asked lazily, stretched out on a towel. She couldn't fathom _how_ he could just make the stares just stop; the only thing she could think about were those evil glances they were giving Robin. It felt a lot like being rained on by stray exclamatory points and hypens.

… She should've brought an umbrella.

"You dragged me here," she huffed, brushing dark hair out of her eyes as she attempted to lie down and relax. Fat chance.

"You could've just teleported away."

"You would've gone back for me."

Okay, that was a lie-a pale and pathetic lie to boot. Robin would've went back and strapped her to the table. Robin grinned.

"So you like being around me?"

She tried coming up with an answer that wouldn't incriminate her. "No."

Robin smirked and propped himself on his elbows. "Really?"

He attempted looking at her in the eye, but instead wound up looking at the bridge of her nose instead.

"Really," she confirmed stiffly. "Can we go now?"

Robin looked like he was seriously considered saying "yes". After all, if it was in the best interest of his team, then he'd do it in a heartbeat. Instead, the Boy Wonder got to his feet. "Nah. Let's go on a water slide!" He grabbed her wrists and pulled her up.

Raven growled. "You've got to be kidding me." Nonetheless, she didn't resist the tug and followed him to a giant, obnoxiously blue slide. The end of the slide was a good six feet from the water. She stared. And stared. And stared some more.

"A real beauty isn't it?" Robin said confidently, dragging her up the stairs.

"A real terror, you mean."

He laughed evilly and only began walking faster. The empath only sighed and wondered how long of a hospital stay he would have after she threw him off the towel.

"It might be dangerous," she said, looking wearily at the drop.

"It's safe."

"Have you ever been on it, then?"

"No."

Raven almost fell into the ground. "Then how do you know you aren't risking your neck? There's no one else in line!"

"They have to pass certain tests. Besides, I still have my utility belt with me."

Her eyes drifted down to his waist. Sure enough… he was wearing his utility belt.

"Good grief," Raven muttered sarcastically just instances before Robin shoved her down the slide. Naturally, she went down with as little screaming as possible.

* * *

  
 _Day five  
_ _Titans Tower  
_ _10:43AM_

"Throwing Robin off the tower was a little extreme, wasn't it?"

"No," Raven replied curtly. Beast Boy buried his face in his hands. "He deserved it."

The reason why he hated being alone with Raven? She tended to creep him out a little with her "the world owes me something" attitude. Not to mention he didn't like goth girls. They were too... depressing.

"And what did he do?" he said, attempting to pry into whatever was so horribly traumatic it required her to toss Robin off a water slide. She was quiet. "C'mon, Rae. You know you can talk to me."

"No, I don't." Raven looked up from her book and glared at the changeling. "Why are you so interested, anyway?"

Beast Boy sweatdropped. He seriously considered telling her, "Well, Cyborg hired/bribed me to see if you two were shacking it up behind our backs" but decided against it as memories of Raven's teapot blowing up in his face bombarded his brain.

"… You two seem to be in love?" he fibbed weakly. She stared. Then she got up. "If you call me 'Rae' _ever_ _again_ , I'll rip your brains out from your nose and force feed them to you, you perverted shape-shifter," she threatened nastily as she left the room.

It could have been the "who dropped you on your head when you were a baby?" brush off, but then the windows started cracking. With a small grin, he got out his communicator. He clicked a button to access a private channel and cringed as an earful of static came on instead.

"Agent Y reporting to Commander X."

There was a crackle of static.

"Commander X coming in. How is project Wattlebird doing?"

"Dude, that sounds so uncool," giggled Beast Boy, but quickly sobered up at the low growl on the other comm. "Traffic Light took Nevermore to the Hydrogen Hydroxide station. Twice."

"And?"

"They were mobbed by screaming fangirls the first day and Nevermore threw Traffic Light off a tower the next day." Stiff silence on the other end. "Um… Cy?"

"That's Commander X to you."

"Whatever," huffed Beast Boy. "Are we still trying to get Traffic Light and Icy Comet together?"

"Hmm," hummed Cyborg. "Nah. Why did you come up with such a stupid idea to get Traffic Light and Icy Comet together?"

"ME? It was **_your_** idea!"

"I mean, they're a pair of total opposites," continued the cybernetic boy in a hushed whisper. "Traffic and Comet? Ha!" Beast Boy sweatdropped. "Okay. So how did it go?"

A vein throbbed in his forehead. "I JUST TOLD YOU HOW IT WENT!"

Feedback rang in both of their ears for a brief moment.

"Okay. Here's the plan." Cyborg took a deep breath and then exhaled sharply. "…I don't know. Maybe we should just drop project Wattlebird."

"…yeah. Maybe. I'm getting tired of people trying to cut my tail off with carving knives." Privately, Beast Boy added, _'And I'm sick of you not being able to decide who you're trying to get together.'_

Cyborg let out a hearty guffaw. "Project Wattlebird wasn't that bad."

"My _tail_ almost got cut off—twice!"He pause as he stopped to consider how it went again. Accidents, blowing up washing machines, an angry Raven, upset Robin… "It went better than project Hentai. Remember when we locked Robin and Star in the basement?"

A dull beeping sound took over the comm. Cyborg had hung up on him! Smoldering, Beast Boy tucked the communicator away in his boot.

…come to think about it, if anyone mentioned project Hentai to him again, he'd probably turn off the comm., too.

* * *

"Hmm."

Cyborg didn't like the sound of that 'hmm' Robin just gave him.

"Hmm."

He didn't like it in the sense of _really_ didn't like it.

" _Hmm_."

"Is there something wrong, Robin?" Starfire asked. Robin looked up, apparently surprised.

"No. Why?"

"Your constant humming is making me drive the proverbial car up the proverbial wall!"

Cyborgstifled his sudden urge to giggle.

"Sorry 'bout that, Star. I just caught a very interesting conversation on the comm. Something about a project Hentai." He eyed Cyborg uncertainly. "You aren't looking at—"

"NO," Cyborg said loudly. The walls shook and Robin hid a small smile.

"Of course." Robin began fidgeting. "Cy?"

The said boy braced himself. "What?"

"Since Raven doesn't like the water park…"

Uh-oh.

"Man! You still plan on taking her out?" Cyborg could have died laughing at the expression Robin's face took when he blurt out those words. Of course, if he _did_ die, Starfire would probably shock him back to life with that angry expression on her face.

Robin flushed heatedly. "No! It's just that… Raven doesn't like water parks that much… and I need to find somewhere to give her the cloak Alfred made without having her blow up on me."

Cyborg stared as the gears started working in his brain. Robin and Raven? Of course! How could've he been so… blind? A wide grin began spreading on his face.

Project Wattlebird, all new and revised, was back in action.


	4. Chinese Checkers

_Day nine_

"Traffic Light and Nevermore are setting up a board game…"

"Hmm. Go on."

"Um… it's a six pointed star with a lot of dots on it." Beast Boy squinted at the board as hard as he could without straining his eyeballs. "Uh…"

Cyborg/Commander X sounded ready to throttle the communicator. "What do the pieces look like?"

"Um," Beast Boy stalled, "They look like bowling pins."

"Chinese checkers?"

"Um…"

Cyborg moaned. "You're helpless. Okay. You see the couch they're sitting on?"

"Yep."

"There's a button on the bottom left corner on the back. Press it and come to the Command Center. Do you copy, Agent Y?"

"Mhmm," Beast Boy said, changing into a mouse and scuttling to the couch. He looked for a button and smacked a bright green button disguised as an unsightly vomit stain. Nothing that any of the other Titans would touch that with a four-mile long pole. With a twitch, the green mouse turned into a butterfly that fluttered out of the living room.

* * *

"Raven…"

"Yes?"

"Make a move already," Robin groaned. It had been five minutes since he made his move, and she still hadn't made her first move. Needless to say, Robin didn't have Batman's trademarked Everlasting Patience.

"I'm still deciding…"

Robin groaned and rubbed the bridge of his nose. This would take forever…

 _Click._

He looked down. Raven made her move and was looking smugly at Robin. He turned his attention back to the board.

"You can't make that move."

"Yes I can."

"No, you can't." Robin was beginning to think he should've just whipped out the Snakes and Ladders game instead, but he had faith in her intellect. Sort of. Kind of. Come to think of it... not at all. "You can't move _that_ piece there because it isn't connected to the next dot. Move this piece instead and put _that_ one back." With a flourish of his wrist, Robin pushed back a blue piece and moved another blue one forward. That didn't look right, either. "Or you could just take this piece and jump it over so-"

"Robin?"

"What?" He looked up.

"Shut up."

He complied and advanced one of his red pieces forward. Two minutes later in dead silence, Raven _still_ didn't make her move.

"Does it always take you this long?" he asked. She looked up and glared.

"I've never played Chinese checkers before," she said shortly. "Give me some credit."

" _I_ didn't take that long on _my_ first game," grumbled Robin. She sneered, and made another illegal move. "You can't do that, either."

Her eyebrow twitched angrily as she corrected her mistake. Robin swallowed a lump in the back of his throat. Alfred had managed to make a new cloak for her days ago and he was _still_ too chicken to give it to her. In fact, he was sitting on it right now. A red piece jumped over another red piece, and Robin braced himself for another five minutes of insufferable boredom.

"I still don't understand…" Raven began. The Boy Wonder looked up. "Cyborg said that he couldn't get a definite analysis of what blew up the washing machine."

His eyebrow twitched. "For the last time, _I didn't_ —"

"—Blow up the washing machine," she finished, lowering her voice in a mockery of his own. "I never said you did. The point is, something in _your_ utility belt went off, and that blew up _all my cloaks._ " It baffled Robin how Raven could contradict herself so quickly and efficiently.

"My utility belt was around my waist the entire day."

"No it wasn't."

"Yes it was."

She looked at him critically. "How many utility belts do you have?"

"Twenty eight."

"See?" Raven made her first legal move of Chinese checkers. Robin made his next move in a heartbeat. "You must've been wearing one in the morning, accidentally…" her voice trailed off. " But if your utility belt was in the laundry machine, and all the items in your utility belt are documented… Then Cyborg must've been lying. You two might be working together in a conspiracy…"

There were times when Raven's suspicious nature came in handy, such as weeding out spies or spotting lies. There were times when they were entirely unhelpful, such as the time her powers moved things in her room without her knowing it. She practically put the entire Tower under house arrest for a few weeks. There were times when that nature came out as "completely paranoid" instead of suspicious, such as the time the Titans tried throwing Beast Boy a surprise birthday party and didn't tell her. Beast Boy was still bummed out about the exploding presents. And there were times, such as this one, when it was a complete and total pain in the neck.

"No one in this Tower is conspiring against you," Robin said, feeling irritated. "If they were, I'd hear them."

"Unless one of them has telepathy…"

He groaned. A blue piece jumped over two others—and to Robin's surprise, all the jumps were legal.

… Humph.

One red piece moved forward.

"No one on the team has telepathy," Robin said irritably. "Not unless they haven't been telling us something."

Raven coughed and shuffled a piece to the left. Red moved closer to the center. Blue was still crammed at home base. Blue leaped.

And red moved closer and closer to home.

Awkward silence.

"You're getting better," Robin commented as Raven brought one of the pieces from the back closer to the front lines. "But not good enough."

Red and blue suddenly were squaring off.

And suddenly blue jumped right over red.

"In. Your. Dreams," Raven murmured, smirking triumphantly.

Red and blue wageda silent, miniscule war on the table. Unable to toleratethe oppressing silenceafter several more minutes, Robin spoke.

"…Am I the only one who finds it a little strange that Cyborg and Beast Boy have been talking in codes?"

"What?" Raven asked vaguely. Robin silently smacked himself on the forehead. Of course. He was the only one who tapped into other people's conversations in this Tower. And he called her paranoid.

"Over the last few weeks, they've been talking in code over their communicators," Robin explained, brow furrowing as he began piecing things together in his mind. "Project Wattlebird, Nevermore, Traffic Light, Icy Comet, Commander X, Agent Y, project Hentai…" He paused for overly dramatic, soap opera-ish effect. "I've figured out about half of it. Commander X and Agent Y are Cyborg and Beast Boy. You're Nevermore. Icy Comet is Star, which would make me Traffic Light, assuming that they're referring to us in those codes."

"And if they want to play spy games, why should we stop them?" Raven wondered, sliding a piece closer to her goal.

"Because judging by some of those transmissions, it's going to cause chaos, that's why!" Robin said hotheadedly. "We can't risk having another mole."

"We both know that no one's going to be a spy this time. We've done background checks, probed their minds, and took every possible precaution in the world," said Raven dryly. She made a rather clever move that landed her on the other side of the board. "How would you know what's in their private conversations, anyway?"

"I have my ways…"

She stared. It really was a conspiracy! First the…she shook her head. Paranoia was really getting to her. A nice, _long_ meditation session would put her in place.

Two blue pieces at home… most reds still stuck in the middle, unable to move efficiently due to the sheer number of them out there.

"You're going to lose," Raven said confidently. Robin remained quiet and moved diagonally. Raven was about to move again when she realized what Robin did.

All of her pieces had been, more or less, immobilized. The big clump of pieces he arranged there was to stop _her_ pieces from moving—and meanwhile Robin's pieces were skipping their way across the board. She scowled.

"You...!"

* * *

"…damn it! Robin taps into our convos?" Beast Boy asked, looking utterly dismayed.

"Apparently," Cyborg grunted from the darkness of his room. He was too busy trying to delete all evidence of Project Wattlebird's existence to pay too much attention to Beast Boy's teenage drama.

"Dude! That's so _sick_."

"Uh huh."

"What if he knows about—"

"Probably."

"How did he know about the codes? … were we being too obvious?"

"Guess so."

"Uh… Are you listening?"

"Of course."

"…are you secretly having a love affair with the T-Car?" Beast Boy asked, beginning to wonder if Cyborg was paying any attention at all.

"Maybe."

"Do you and Starfire have plans to have a late night rendezvous and ravish each other silly?"

"Absolutely. Why not?" Cyborg said, sighing in relief as the last files with the keywords 'Nevermore, Wattlebird, Traffic Light' and 'Comet' were deleted.

Beast Boy sweatdropped. "Cy!"

Cyborg looked up. "What?"

"What are we going to do about Wattlebird now?"

The athlete shrugged his massive shoulders. "I dunno. Maybe it's time to put it to rest once and for all."

"What? Why?"

"They figured us out," Cyborg said with a sigh. "Even if Robin didn't find out the exact meaning, he's bound to eventually… and there's no fun in being a spy if the enemy knows what you're up to." Cyborg looked at the computer screen. His reflection stared back at him. "We aren't matchmakers, BB. If we couldn't get Robin and Star together last year with project Wattlebird when they were crushing on each other, how could we make the two of them the lovey-dovey couple?"

Beast Boy deflated. "...maybe..."

Cyborg eyed him oddly, and turned on the lights. The changeling's ears tipped back as he blinked owlishly for several minutes. "Maybe?"

"Maybe we could try it under a different code name," said Beast Boy, looking hopeful. "Project Uglymole or something. I mean... this was actually pretty fun."

A slow smile was beginning to appear on the android's face. Aside from the many near disasters, yelling, and close calls, Project Wattlebird wasn't that bad. Beast Boy's optimism was beginning to wear off on him, too.

"All right," he said, conceding. "You'll be Commander Green Bean. I'll be Agent Blue Skull." Beast Boy's jaw dropped. "You call the shots this time, green bean."

* * *

"I win."

Raven scowled darkly at the board. "Hmph."

Robin smirked triumphantly. "If it's any consolation, you did well for a beginner." She evil eyed him. Robin sweatdropped. "… Want a rematch?"

"No."

"…" it was a now-or-never situation. Well, probably not _never_ , but… "D-d-d'you want a new cloak?"

She looked at him, obviously surprised. A chair in the background floated a few inches from the ground and then set itself back down. "I already bought them."

"No… I mean…" He should've done this somewhere else. "Remember last week?"

"How could I forget?" Raven deadpanned. Robin rolled his eyes.

"I mean other than the entire 'blown up laundry'," he said. "I told you that I needed your measurements for a new cloak." The gears in Raven's head were beginning to turn, and he could almost see the pieces of the puzzle fitting together. "Alfred managed to stitch up a new one using the scraps of your laundry. He finished it six days ago."

"So you've been haunting my door, tried giving me breakfast in bed, took me to a water park _twice_ , took me out to dinner, serenaded outside my window and played Chinese checkers…" Her eyes widened. "And I treated you like you were some undeserving halfwit…"

She inhaled sharply, and let it out slowly.

"I figured you were still angry," Robin said sheepishly. "I mean, you have some memories attached to them, and you treated me like an 'undeserving halfwit'" (Raven actually reddened at that) "and you never really said whether you forgave me or not for the entire mess—"

"That's because you never asked," Raven said, exasperation creeping into her voice. "What was I supposed to do, walk up to you and say, 'I accept your nonexistent apology'?"

"That would've saved me a lot of trouble!" Robin said hotheadedly. "If you weren't such a recluse, then I might've been able to ask you whether you were still mad at me!"

"Who said I was mad at you?"

"I did!"

"I wasn't! And I'm not!"

"Then why did you always treat people like you hate them?"

She faltered. "I don't treat them like I hate them."

"You never get close to people, you always act aloof, and when people try to help you, you shove them away!" He was yelling. Bad Robin. He took a shuddering breath. "I know you have your reasons—"

"Then respect them. Just because you and seventy five percent of all humans are extroverts-"

"It doesn't give you an excuse to hide yourself in your room all the time." He took her hand. "We can help." Something blew up in the background.

"I'm _not ready_ ," she said through grit teeth. She wrenched her hand away.

"But we'll be there when you are."

They stared. Blue eyes stared into a black and white mask. Finally, Raven broke the stare and looked intently over Robin's shoulder. Robin cleared his throat.

"That clears up some confusion," Robin finally said.

"Yes. It did."

Robin stood up and removed the cloak from under the couch. It had a vague 'hand-me-down' look to it, and the stitchings were very... neat. "Here. You'll probably never wear it, but…"

She blinked and accepted the cloak. "Thank you." Raven cleared her throat. "I should go back to my room."

"Alright," Robin said simply. "Bye."

She stood up and walked out of the room… leaving Robin with his thoughts. He had gone through all that trouble and all she said was 'thank you'. On one level, Robin probably should have felt angry, but on another level… all that time he spent with her was time spent well. He never had a chance to get that close to Raven—and knowing her, he'd never get that close again.

 _'I can always try, can't I?'_

He smiled slightly.

Quietly, Robin cleared the board and put it away.


	5. Word Association

Creak. Creak. Creak.

They sat on the swing set, not really swinging but not really doing anything else, either. Cyborg, Starfire, and Beast Boy played a three-way game of soccer. Neither of them were really looking at the trio laughing and arguing and shrieking in delight and moaning in disappointment. She was staring at the ground, as if she were trying to count every single grain of sand under her feet.

He was staring at her, analyzing her in the same way he'd analyze a crime scene, though he had to admit this was a lot more pleasant.

Creak. Creak. Creak. _-AAAAAAAK._

...but the creaking swing set was definitely distracting from the view.

"We should stop them. Cyborg might blow Beast Boy's head off," Raven said, looking up to see the other Titans standing in a triangle bickering senselessly. The sudden breach of silence made Robin jump in surprise.

"You mean _I_ should, right?" Robin asked with a smirk. "You'll just stand there and laugh."

She gave him the slightest of a smirk. "No, I'll steal the ball from them and chuck it half way to China."

"You can't throw a ball over the Tower," he said, goading her. It was a hobby of his nowadays to get her to talk, argument or not. Unless it was in private, it never worked. "What makes you think you can send it to China?"

"I have telekinesis, wonder boy."

"...touché."

A swing between Robin and Raven fell to the ground as its rusting chains finally gave away. They looked up at their own creaking swings.

"...we should probably get off the swing set."

"Yeah," he agreed.

 _Creak?_

"Or maybe we could stay here. The creaking really is charming."

"Fine," he said. "We will."

"Fine."

"Fine," Robin retorted, trying to sound intelligent.

"Handicap parking, one hundred fifty dollar fine on first offense."

Robin stared. "What?"

"Word association. Just play along, okay?"

Robin smirked. "Car theft."

"Six."

"Five."

"Four."

"Five," said Robin, feeling awfully stupid all of the sudden.

"...idiot."

"Scrabble."

 _CREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAK!_

A swing to Raven's left fell to the ground. She continued on. "Quasar."

"Francais," drawled Robin.

"English, please."

"Brqyzodqdfd."

"Snark."

"Jargon."

"Files."

"Flies!"

"Lord."

"...of the Rings."

"Gondor."

"Aragorn?"

"King."

"Arwen."

"Eowyn."

"Faramir."

"King of Hearts," said the empath, wondering how 'fine' turned into chatting _Lord of the Rings_ romances.

"Me," Robin said with all the swaggering arrogance he could muster, and smirked. Raven rolled her eyes.

"Love," Raven said... and promptly wrinkled her nose as an unspoken "wait, where did that come from?" statement. Robin only looked at her, startled and dumbstruck. Several moments of uneasy silence passed until Raven poked him in the ribs. That seemed to wake him up. He almost looked like he blinked under his mask, and then look at her straight in the eye. Shivers ran up and down her spine and her heart beat faster in anticipation as Robin leaned over to her and whispered in her ear...

"You."


End file.
